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Racial tensions in US amid George Floyd protests unseen since Martin Luther King assassination

June 2, 2020

Not since the 1968 assassination of African American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr has the US seen racial turbulence to the scale seen in recent days.

The 1960s saw black rights activists finally win the right to vote and end racial segregation in the American South.

But police brutality has always been difficult to legislate against, the BBC reports. 

Black Americans never achieved pay equality either.

In 2009, after the election of the USA’s first African American president, Barack Obama, many hoped it would repair racial tensions in the country. However, this didn’t prove to be the case. President Donald Trump was then elected in 2016, gaining advantage of the backlash from some white voters over the election of a black president.

Now, the pandemic, the economic reality following Covid-19 and demonstrations against police brutality following the death of George Floyd have all affected people of colour disproportionately.

Martin Luther King Jr said "when the sore [of America's racial divide] is about to heal, the wound is reopened again by incidents like this".

Watch the full story in the video above. 

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